Why the Tea Party is unyielding on the debt ceiling

The liberal media have gone to warp speed in their defense of President Obama and their attacks on the Tea Party. We are “extreme” and “dangerous.” Republicans are “afraid of” the Tea Party. And more.

The narrative in the media is that Obama and Republican House Speaker John Boehner were close to a deal last week that would have resolved the debt-ceiling crisis. It would have allowed for continued borrowing and more “revenue,” the euphemism of the day for tax increases. And the Tea Party said no.

The Tea Party did say no. Unfortunately, Boehner is not listening to those who elected him and is now pushing a plan with almost nonexistent budget cuts.

Why is the Tea Party intransigent on the debt ceiling? Why is the Tea Party pushing congressional Republicans so hard that we have a crisis?

As the founder of Tea Party Nation, I feel confident in saying that the Tea Party understands what so many in Washington seem to have forgotten: We do not have a debt crisis. We have a spending crisis. There is only one way you get to a debt crisis — you spend too much money.

Read More at The Washington Post By Judson Phillips, The Washington Post

Republicans: Don’t fall for elites’ fear mongering

The playbook of the Washington establishment is getting old and almost boring.

Play No. 1 is this: Pass billions in unfunded new programs. Tell everyone we will take care of them from cradle to grave. Subsidized food, medical care, housing, and if your employer goes broke like General Motors or AIG, we will step in with a safety net to rescue the businesses with government loans and grants. The criterion for help and rescue is: Does your support come our way at election time?

Play No. 2 is this: If the American people rebel and say we don’t want to pay anymore for Congress’ wasteful government spending, tell Americans that if they don’t capitulate, the end of the world is upon us. And give “destruction day” a specific deadline for added fright power. This time the date is Aug. 2, 2011 – the day the world will end unless you support our out-of-control foolish spending.

Then the theatrics begin. The media are mesmerized and cued to play their well-honed part in the playbook. Weeks of reporting commence on all of the terrible results from failing to fully fund the government elite’s pet programs. Here are some of the outcomes we have heard referenced resulting from a failure to raise the debt ceiling: Unemployment will skyrocket. Thousands of businesses will shut down. Soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan will be abandoned without ammunition, pay or a way home. Your credit-card interest rate will double or triple. Your mom won’t get her Social Security check. Your local hospital will close. All stocks on the NYSE will suddenly fall to zero with massive bankruptcies filling the courts. Farmers will stop planting crops. The supermarket shelves are soon empty. One pundit even predicted mass psychosis if Los Angeles doesn’t get its monthly shipment of anti-depressants. He claims one-third of the population is on the government-subsidized pills.

Wow, no wonder John Boehner and the Republicans roll over and fund everything the Washington establishment desires. They would be personally responsible for the end of America, the starvation of 300 million people and the shutdown of your cable TV.

Read More at WorldNetDaily by Floyd and Mary Beth Brown, WorldNetDaily

Going Galt without even knowing it

A blogger named David McElroy recently wrote of a Birmingham (Alabama) businessman who,after listening to a room full of moochers and leeches piss whine and moan about the evils of business, publicly threw in the towel regarding his attempt to open a new coal mine.

David compared what happened to a scene right out of “Atlas Shrugged” and then mused,“But I wonder how long it’s going to be before businesspeople really do start walking away and deciding it’s not worth doing business in America today. Or is it already happening and we just don’t know it?”

Well,David,it’s going on right now all around us and we do in fact know all about it. I have a good friend from high school who was drafted in the Vietnam era,then earned his civil engineering Bachelor of Science degree afterward at N.C. State via the GI Bill. He started his own construction company, and has run it ever since, directly employing dozens of people and spending millions annually on equipment and materials, thereby employing countless others. Until now; until Obama was elected.

The bottom fell out of the economy under Obammunist economic policies,and then Obamacare de-exempted small construction companies from the 50-employee exemption as demanded by the unions so they could kill all non-union construction companies. Well it worked.

My friend said he was finally fed up and was finally able to say what Obama has demanded that all productive people must say, namely,“I have enough money”. He said he figured he had worked hard all his life, saved his earnings, and it was finally it was time to enjoy his savings. My friend fired all his employees,gave away all his equipment (which was fundamentally worthless anyway since everyone else was dumping their equipment too) and retired. Like many who enjoy the work they do,he probably would otherwise have died with his boots on,contributing to society right until the end. But Obammunism forced his hand,and for him personally it was a good thing because he is developing health problems,and in the not-too-distant future would have eventually been unable to enjoy his hard-earned savings.

Read More at Coach is Right  By Basil Irwin, Coach is Right

Congressman: Only ‘theft’ would detour Social Security checks

 

Did Barack Obama have one of those unwelcome political moments when the harsh reality of truth accidentally spills out when he said he couldn’t assure Social Security recipients that their checks would be mailed in August unless he got the debt ceiling increase he wanted?

Possibly.

Because, the facts are that although there is a specific Social Security trust fund in which Social Security taxes are tabulated, and the government reports there is a $2.7 trillion balance in that account, the taxes go into and the retirement and disability checks come straight out of the nation’s general fund.

That circumstance has prompted U.S. Rep. Bill Posey, R-Fla., to propose, along with half a dozen other House members, legislation that would make certain the payments to senior citizens are made in a timely manner.

The president’s comment came during an appearance recently on CBS.

Read More at WorldNetDaily By Bob Unruh, WorldNetDaily

Complexity and Collapse

The most obvious features of recent political and financial “solutions” are their staggering complexity and their failure to fix what’s broken. The first leads to the second. Consider the healthcare “reform,” thousands of pages of mind-numbing complexity which slathers on thick layers of bureaucratic control on a system which already costs twice as much per capita as competing developed-world systems.

Sadly, the “reform” simply solidifies the Status Quo fiefdoms and cartels that control the U.S. sickcare system.

The healthcare reform fixes nothing, while further burdening the nation with useless complexity and cost. The same can be said of the Dodd-Frank “reforms” of the embezzlement-based U.S. financial system. The original Glass–Steagall Act separating investment banking from depository banking was a few pages in length; by one count, Dodd-Frank requires that regulators create 243 rules, conduct 67 studies, and issue 22 periodic reports.

Meanwhile, back in reality, the Financial Elites of Wall Street and the “too big to fail” banks still have the nation (and Europe) by the throat.

Complexity is itself a tax; the maintenance cost of complexity is high, and can only be justified when the added complexity solves a critical problem of the society as a whole.

Read More at Charles Hugh Smith’s BlogSpot  By Charles Hugh Smith

The ‘economic conservative’ compromise

After more than 30 years of observing and covering politics, I wrote in “The Tea Party Manifesto” that there is a major misconception about a “divide” in the movement between so-called “social conservatives” and so-called “economic conservatives.”

What I found was that these labels are not only terribly misleading, but virtually meaningless if one’s goal is to understand the dynamics at work with the conservative movement.

In short and in broad strokes, so-called “economic conservatives” are not all that economically conservative when push comes to shove. And “social conservatives,” as they are wrongly dubbed, tend to be more economically conservative than the supposed “economic conservatives.”

There’s a great living, breathing illustration of this phenomenon for all to see right now. His name is Grover Norquist.

Norquist is the long-time president of Americans for Tax Reform. He has spent his activist career in Washington building relationships and alliances that have made him a powerful force in conservative politics. This despite his seemingly contradictory support from and for Muslim Brotherhood interests and a newer cozy relationship with the Republican homosexual special-interest group GOProud, for which he serves as a member of the board of advisers.

Read More at WND   By Joseph Farah, WorldNetDaily

Obama Prison Blues

Exclusive: New information on Romney’s views on global warming

 

Recently, various media outlets have reported on Romney’s statement in which he expressed support for global warming: “I believe the world is getting warmer, and I believe that humans have contributed to that.” This despite the last two winters being among the coldest in recent history and the recent evidence revealing pro-global warming scientists to have made fraudulent claims and suppressed contrary views. Romney also called for America to “reduce our emissions of pollutants and greenhouse gases,” which, will, of course entail massive new government programs despite air quality in the United States being among the cleanest in the world.

I have always argued that Romney’s long history of promoting liberal causes make him unfit as the GOP nominee and that should he win, his lack of a consistent worldview would set the party back decades. But the “Romney is a conservative” myth has become so entrenched that when people hear about his global warming views, they’re surprised. But Romney has always held liberal views on the environment – he’s just downplayed them for the last five years and hoped no one would notice.

Most voters seem unaware of that Romney ran for Governor on a global warming platform. In 2004, Governor Romney initiated the “Massachusetts Climate Protection Plan” which just about every New England free market group attacked due to the harmful effects the plan would have upon the state’s economy. This plan morphed into a larger regional plan called the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), that Romney and ten other liberal Northeastern governors signed. The goal of the pact was to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by ten percent by 2019. This pact, of course, assumed the global warming theory was scientific fact and to carry it out its wide-ranging dictates, Romney hired Douglas Foy, a radical environmental activist.

Foy’s claim to fame was his notoriety for suing businesses for not complying with various draconian environmental regulations. Not surprisingly, RGGI was a disaster from day one and created such economic uncertainty that businesses began to flee the state. Indeed, the job creation record of Gov. Romney became the second worst in the country, another shocking fact most voters are unaware of. Nevertheless, against all evidence, Romney insisted that RGGI was “good for business,” a statement which sounds like Obama’s statements about how his policies promoting alternative fuels are “good for business.”

As a result of the negative economic impact and a pressure campaign mounted by the business community, Romney did eventually pull out of RGGI. However, shortly after pulling out of RGGI, Romney initiated new regulations that essentially did the same thing RGGI was planning to do: a series of damaging emission regulations targeted at power plants. Incredibly, in preparations for these regulations, Romney proceeded to demonize the plants, even claiming “the Salem Harbor Plant is responsible for 53 premature deaths, 570 emergency room visits and 14,400 asthma attacks each year.” It turned out that these stats were false and borrowed from extremist environmental propaganda. Moreover, the stats were based upon a theoretical model created by the American Cancer Society and had nothing to do with the Salem Harbor plant. Even though there were zero deaths associated with the Salem Harbor power plant, Romney held a press conference in front of the power plant with all his extremist environmentalist friends present and recited these phony statistics while hysterically announcing “that plant kills people.” Bear in mind Salem Harbor was a legal power plant in full compliance with the law in every respect. Due to the impact Romney’s regulations had upon energy rates, the Salem Harbor power plant filed for bankruptcy two years later but was then purchased by Dominion Power. Foy later became a “super-secretary” in the Romney administration, responsible for overseeing the transportation, housing, environmental and energy agencies.

 Read More at Romney Exposed By Rino Hunter, Romney Exposed

Terrorist proclaimed himself ‘Darwinian,’ not ‘Christian’

A review of Anders Behring Breivik’s 1,500-page manifesto shows the media’s quick characterization of the Norwegian terrorist as a “Christian” may be as incorrect as it was to call Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh one.

Breivik was arrested over the weekend, charged with a pair of brutal attacks in and near Oslo, Norway, including a bombing in the capital city that killed 7 and a shooting spree at a youth political retreat on the island of Utoya that killed more than 80 victims.

Piecing together Breivik’s various posts on the Internet, many media reports have characterized the terrorist – who says he was upset over the multiculturalist policies stemming from Norway’s Labour Party – as a “right-wing, Christian fundamentalist.”

Yet, while McVeigh rejected God altogether, Breivik writes in his manifesto that he is not religious, has doubts about God’s existence, does not pray, but does assert the primacy of Europe’s “Christian culture” as well as his own pagan Nordic culture.

Breivik instead hails Charles Darwin, whose evolutionary theories stand in contrast to the claims of the Bible, and affirms: “As for the Church and science, it is essential that science takes an undisputed precedence over biblical teachings. Europe has always been the cradle of science, and it must always continue to be that way. Regarding my personal relationship with God, I guess I’m not an excessively religious man. I am first and foremost a man of logic. However, I am a supporter of a monocultural Christian Europe.”

 Read More at WorldNetDaily WorldNetDaily

The “Gang of Six” Deal is the Antithesis of Reform

The media frenzy over Republican Senators and Barack Obama making nice over the debt ceiling crisis exposes for all Americans to see the extent to which both parties are aligned with Wall Street interests, and against the interests of Main Street and small business. The subject of this latest bipartisan love fest is the Gang of Six plan.

Americans want reform. The Republican majority in the House of Representatives was swept into office by promising reform. The Gang of Six solution is the antithesis of reform.

Supposedly it offers the “balanced approach” of which Obama rambles on about endlessly. But in reality, the Gang of Six is one-sided. It offers only vague language about spending cuts. At best the Gang of Six plan might cut $500 billion, and even these cuts cannot be guaranteed. In real terms, government would continue to grow.

Also the Gang of Six solution would dramatically increase taxes. It calls upon the Senate Finance Committee to craft a tax reform plan that would actually increase taxes by $2.3 trillion over a 10 year period. Some members even cynically call it a tax reduction by using a baseline that everyone knows is phony. This is a baseline that predicts all of the middle class tax cuts signed into law by President Bush was repealed.

All of this because rejecting the debt ceiling increase would require the U.S. government to right size itself and begin a pay as you go diet.

Read More at Floyd Reports by Floyd and Mary Beth Brown, Floyd Reports